Does Western Women's Dress Sense Increase The Threat Of Terrorism From Al'Qaeda?

Discussion in 'World Events' started by common_sense_seeker, Jul 7, 2009.

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Does Western Women's Dress Sense Increase The Threat Of Terrorism From Al'Qaeda?

  1. Yes - The provocative & revealing clothing of western women adds to the justification of terrorism..

    4 vote(s)
    30.8%
  2. No - Women should be allowed to walk naked if they want to, without the threat of rape from men.

    9 vote(s)
    69.2%
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  1. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    Bullshit. Completely unwarranted assumption.

    And note how central such assumptions are to this kind of "analysis". Another interesting one is the conflation of military superiority with cultural innovation and sophistication in general.
    Splitting hairs with dubious judgements of "sophistication" and dubious assignments of innovation source within a culture does not conceal the basic situation - also visible in those other examples (Vikings, Scots, North and South American frontier settlers, Inuit, etc. We could add a couple of famous stagnations to the list - the Chinese empires, the Ottoman empire, noted for their oppression of women ).
    Now you are going around in circles - the Scots and Vikings were simultaneously more innovative, more expansionist, more culturally sophisticated and wider spread, and culturally more female promiscuous, than the people they bested in direct competition and still best in direct comparison.

    This kind of denigration of the acquired capabilities necessary to settle previously uninhabited, unsettled land is typical of this kind of analysis.

    I am taking your description of Unwin as given - if you have misrepresented his work, I apologize to his memory.
    No, he didn't. Nobody did. Not in the 1920s, and probably not now. If he thought that was what he was doing, he was fooling himself - for example, he had no way of determining the "dependent" or causal relationship, even supposing he could in some culture-bias free way evaluate something like "weaken" (or establish continuity of culture, for that matter). And let alone even mention "race" and "intelligence"!? Is that from him?

    I don't care what you call it. The US has some nice names for its drone attacks on funerals, too - does that make them all better?
    Bizarre - fundies are capable of believing just about anything, apparently.

    And it would still be oppression if it did.
     
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  3. visceral_instinct Monkey see, monkey denigrate Valued Senior Member

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    Show me some research proving that female promiscuity IN HUMANS causes lower intelligence.
     
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  5. Slysoon Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    155
    iceaura

    It is not unwarranted. Outside of Han China, the cultural groups Polynesians were most likely to come in contact with - from their area of origin, Taiwan, to Micronesia and Melanesia - were very primitive and non-expansionist. By examining cultural innovations and territorial expansion - albeit across largely unsettled and uninhabited territory - it is reasonable to infer a superiority in intelligence of the Polynesians over many of their immediate cultural neighbours. The significance of this intelligence gap may very well explain their cultural superiority over slightly less promiscuous cultural neighbours.

    Also, military superiority can and should be conflated with cultural innovation and sophistication in general, but not completely. Paleolithic and neolithic warfare could not be reasonably conflated with cultural innovation and sophistication because such warfare consisted of primitive weaponry which did not help expand the culture of its bearers significantly. However, successful Bronze and Iron Age warfare required sophisticated weaponry and armoury which were created using metalworking, which also helped expand culture through artifacts, tools, pottery, and so on. Essentially, to sustain military superiority, cultures were required to display a high standard of cultural sophistication and innovation in terms of strategy, weaponry, and armoury. The resources invested in sustaining military superiority also helped various cultural institutions progress.

    The judgments of sophistication and innovation in Polynesian cultures are hardly dubious. West Polynesian cultures feature large, high-density populations, whereas East Polynesian cultures do not, despite having similar resources, people, and territorial size. West Polynesian cultures have monumental architecture, whereas such architecture is relatively absent in East Polynesian cultures. West Polynesian cultures have much stronger marriage institutions and therefore higher-investment parenting tendencies than East Polynesian cultures. West Polynesians cultures also have much more advanced monetary and political structures than East Polynesian cultures, and are more prominent traders.

    What is of interest is that the East and West cultural division amongst Polynesians is of one genetic people. This is of great interest to anthropologists, because the two cultures are radically different even though they are practiced by the same people. It is clear the Western Polynesian cultures are more advanced and well-suited for modern global competition than Eastern Polynesian cultures, and part of the explanation for this reality is due to much lower rates of female promiscuity and higher rates of monogamy in Western Polynesian cultures. Stricter sexual norms allowed Western Polynesian cultures to advance past Eastern Polynesian cultures.

    The Vikings were generally monogamous and not sexually promiscuous. To quote myself:

    "Viking women certainly had rights to property, limited divorce, and inheritance, but they were not sexually promiscuous, and their sexual freedoms were nowhere near the freedoms Viking men enjoyed. Viking women were forced into marriage by their fathers in their early teens, and were expected to efficiently run households. Socially, it was understood that Viking women would be chaste until marriage, whereas the same standard was not applied nearly as strictly to men. Polygyny also existed in Viking societies, most times amongst upper-class men, and especially amongst kings and earls. Adulterous behaviours amongst women were taken very seriously, as the husband retained the right - which he oftentimes used - to kill his wife and the man whom she had had a secretive affair with."

    They may have been slightly more promiscuous than their non-Scandinavian, southern European counterparts, but not significantly enough to alter their cultural advantage over them, which lasted three or so centuries. The Scottish people converted to Christianity in the third and fourth centuries through Saint Ninian, and were universally Christian come the eighth century. Your era of interest for the Scots - the post-Viking era - is even more supportive of my argument as they were at such times at the peak of their sexual repression and monogamy. During this era they "inspired many a ballad, claimed various territorial conquests, and established widely used trading routes". Especially significant is their territorial expansion and colonization during this era.

    Hardly. Your description of the pre-Inuit Dorset Tuniit -

    "Another example might be the ... pre-Inuit peoples of the Arctic, whose deeply sophisticated technological innovations and consequent expansion over huge territories was accompanied by sexual norms of a kind carefully omitted from popular accounts in the European family media."

    - is grandiose and misleading. They had few technological innovations to speak of, none of which were "deeply sophisticated". Also, their expansion did not occur because their culture was more sophisticated and innovative than other nearby cultures; their expansion occurred because it covered uninhabited and unsettled lands which featured climates they had already adapted to pre-expansion.

    Unwin didn't need to explore the dynamic behind the relationships. His research unearthed the trend that, regardless of the reasoning behind the female promiscuity of a given culture, its health depended on the rates of said promiscuity. Furthermore, "stagnate" and "weaken" are simple to define: the culture in question stops producing new technologies and innovations, becomes less prominent in trade, witnesses a decline in intellectuals, makes little to no architectural advancement, ceases to expand territorially, encounters a loss in territory, or becomes conquered by another culture altogether. There are more factors, all of which - individually or in combination with one another - indicate the stagnation and weakening of a given culture. Moreover, these factors can hardly be considered to be culturally-biased; instead, they are universal standards all cultures have followed and continue to follow.

    The mentioning of race and intelligence was not Unwin's doing; Unwin simply made reference to cultures. I mentioned race as a counterexample to your comparison of chimpanzees to gorillas and porpoises to elephant seals, in that comparisons begin to fail the weaker the relation becomes. I also mentioned intelligence to explain why certain individuals form more innovative and sophisticated cultures than others. I mentioned intelligence versus the size of genitals and qualities of sperm in humans and various other animals to illustrate the connection between female promiscuity and the health of a given culture, and why offspring from promiscuous species and cultures tend to be less intelligent than offspring from the same species and cultures when they undergo extended periods of female sexual repression and monogamy.
     
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  7. Ophiolite Valued Senior Member

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    9,232
    I voted yes.
    The poll question has been modified. Originally the Yes was accompanied by words akin to "Women's dress sense int the West increases the risk of terrorism." That remains self evident and anyone who fails to see that is in need of a brain transplant.
     
  8. Asguard Kiss my dark side Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    23,049
    so lets see, your illogical rampage says that females sleeping around equals low inteligence and then when your show cultures that prove your "theorys" crap you claim its because they were more intelligent which compleatly contradicts yourself.

    look your wrong, your a crackpot. go crawl in the courner, cry about it and then go and do some REAL study on sexuality
     
  9. Repo Man Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    4,955
    Well, you see there is this eminently qualified nineteenth century biologist whose work has been swept under the rug because of political correctness, and the global Jewish conspiracy...
     
  10. codanblad a love of bridges Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    1,397
    i saw the thread title and clicked just to post "not only does it increase terrorism, it justifies rape", but the poll, being the most loaded and exaggerated questions i've ever seen, has rendered me useless.
     
  11. Slysoon Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    155
    Female promiscuity does not necessarily mean "low intelligence". It means the culture which practices it is less intelligent and innovative than it would be if its women were sexually repressive and monogamous over an extended period of time. Your logical error is assuming my argument is as follows: promiscuous cultures are less intelligent than sexually repressive and monogamous cultures. This is untrue. My argument is that individual cultures grow, stagnate, or weaken from their cultural position according to female promiscuity or sexual repression and monogamy over extended periods of time.

    Following this logic, the individuals who compose a sexually promiscuous culture may still be more intelligent than the individuals who compose a sexually monogamous and repressive culture. This is because the individuals who compose the first culture have a significantly higher intelligence than the individuals who compose the second culture, which allows for them to maintain their cultural superiority despite their relative sexual lax. A correct application of my argument to this example would be as follows: if the first culture were to become sexually repressive and monogamous for an extended period of time, provided the second culture's practices remained unchanged, there would be an increase in their intelligence gap; if the second culture were to become more sexually promiscuous, provided the first culture's practices remained unchanged, there would be an increase in their intelligence gap.
     
  12. Asguard Kiss my dark side Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    23,049
    basic uni rules, use a source no more than 10 years old orbjustify why.

    so can you do it?

    oh and your right BTW, because inteligence has nothing to do with sexuality
     
  13. Gustav Banned Banned

    Messages:
    12,575

    the more you party, the longer it takes to graduate
    fun but true
     
  14. Gustav Banned Banned

    Messages:
    12,575
    if the land is bountiful (and the women, easy), would you walk on the moon?
     
  15. DiamondHearts Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    2,557
    iceaura, comparing women's right to dress as they choose has no relation to acts of violence or wars. It's a red herring.

    I agree with the proposition that those who voted yes in this poll need psychiatric evaluation.
     
  16. Asguard Kiss my dark side Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    23,049
    i think im going to take a leaf out of tiassa's book and just post the lyrics of a couple of songs

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!



    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cizBRwETDwc

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQU7x7cEnaw

    (pitty they blur her tits in this one

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

    )
     
  17. Bebelina kospla.com Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    5,036
    Cliché: That would be like saying that terrorism is nothing but an attempt from the eastern boys to impress the western girls.
     
  18. visceral_instinct Monkey see, monkey denigrate Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    7,913
    Who is he, exactly?

    And this works how??
     
  19. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    No, it isn't. That kind of "inference" is profoundly wrongheaded - circular, for starters.
    In the first place, that's a very limited field of "cultural sophistication" - surely you are not claiming that the most intelligent and sophisticated cultures universally have the best weaponry, and vice versa? That would be conflating military and cultural sophistication - which you deny.

    In the second place, that's not how Genghis Khan did it. Or the Vikings, for that matter.
    ?! Tell that to the stone age American Reds - the Inca, the Aztec, the Maya.
    Neither are they relevant. The original observation remains: that the exploration of the Pacific and sucessful colonization of distant islands involved intelligence, expansion, great cultural sophistication, and in the case of the Polynesians who did it (especially in the case of the Eastern Polynesians who did the majority of it, settling most places including Hawaii and New Zealand and Easter Island, the boundary corners of Polynesia as a whole) a higher rate of female promiscuity than was found in the stagnant cultures they left behind.
    The Viking women were more sexually independent and "promiscuous" than the women of the more stagnant cultures they raided and out-competed (As were the Scots, the Iroquois, and divers others - we haven't even begun to look at the Greek city states, the Crusades and Renaissance wars, the Bantu expansion, or the great stagnations such as China's and the Ottoman's).

    And when they did run into cultures whose women were more independent and "promiscuous" still - the Inuit and Northeastern American Reds - they did not dominate and take over, as they had elsewhere, for some reason - despite superior weaponry etc.
    Make up your mind - is this "promiscuity" you pretend to be able to "observe" the explanatory cause of the stagnation and stupidity you likewise claim to be able to "observe", or not?
    You have now so confused biological evolution and human cultural change as to be reduced to gibberish. Do you have any "observations" of the comparative size of the testicles of West and East Polynesians?
     
    Last edited: Jul 11, 2009
  20. Slysoon Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    155
    iceaura

    You made the inference yourself. Your description of Polynesian expansion from Taiwan to Micronesia and Melanisia -

    “… the exploration of the Pacific and sucessful colonization of distant islands involved intelligence, expansion, great cultural sophistication, …”

    - supports my argument candidly. The Polynesians were significantly more intelligent and therefore more sophisticated and innovative than many of their cultural neighbours. It is this advantage in intelligence which allowed the Polynesians to explore and colonize distant lands using innovative seafaring technologies whilst their immediate cultural neighbours did little to no colonizing and offered the rest of the world practically nothing in the field of technology.

    I will not bother comparing sexual aspects of these different cultures because they were practiced by different peoples. This is the underlying theme in all of my posts, one you have yet to understand. Furthermore, Unwin never compared different cultures practiced by different peoples; he focused on individual cultures and the changes they underwent during extended periods of female promiscuity and sexual repression and monogamy.

    Your examples of Dorset Tuniit peoples, Inuit peoples, Vikings, Scots, Polynesians, and so on, all argue that such cultures were more innovative and sophisticated than certain cultural neighbours which were seemingly less promiscuous. One by one, I detailed whether these trends were in fact true -

    Pre-Inuit Dorset Tuniit - “They had few technological innovations to speak of, none of which were 'deeply sophisticated'. Also, their expansion did not occur because their culture was more sophisticated and innovative than other nearby cultures; their expansion occurred because it covered uninhabited and unsettled lands which featured climates they had already adapted to pre-expansion.”

    Inuit - "The early Inuits of the Arctic, who traveled eastward from western Alaska, experienced territorial expansion, but not as one might expect. The Inuits gained a significant portion of their territory through warring with the Dorset Tuniits, who were extremely primitive and had very little to no technologies to speak of. Although the Inuits were not strictly monogamous, monogamy was the social norm, exceptions being examples of polygyny rather than polyandry. Inuit women were pressured socially to marry, sometimes even forced by their community, when they were able to efficiently run a household."

    Vikings - "Viking women certainly had rights to property, limited divorce, and inheritance, but they were not sexually promiscuous, and their sexual freedoms were nowhere near the freedoms Viking men enjoyed. Viking women were forced into marriage by their fathers in their early teens, and were expected to efficiently run households. Socially, it was understood that Viking women would be chaste until marriage, whereas the same standard was not applied nearly as strictly to men. Polygyny also existed in Viking societies, most times amongst upper-class men, and especially amongst kings and earls. Adulterous behaviours amongst women were taken very seriously, as the husband retained the right - which he oftentimes used - to kill his wife and the man whom she had had a secretive affair with."

    Scots - "The Scottish people converted to Christianity in the third and fourth centuries through Saint Ninian, and were universally Christian come the eighth century. Your era of interest for the Scots - the post-Viking era - is even more supportive of my argument as they were at such times at the peak of their sexual repression and monogamy. During this era they 'inspired many a ballad, claimed various territorial conquests, and established widely used trading routes'. Especially significant is their territorial expansion and colonization during this era."

    Polynesians - “Outside of Han China, the cultural groups Polynesians were most likely to come in contact with - from their area of origin, Taiwan, to Micronesia and Melanesia - were very primitive and non-expansionist. By examining cultural innovations and territorial expansion - albeit across largely unsettled and uninhabited territory - it is reasonable to infer a superiority in intelligence of the Polynesians over many of their immediate cultural neighbours. The significance of this intelligence gap may very well explain their cultural superiority over slightly less promiscuous cultural neighbours.”

    - and yes, some of them partially were. But whether they were or not is not relevant to Unwin’s thesis, and furthermore, my own, because it compares different cultures practiced by different peoples. To reiterate Unwin’s thesis, individual cultures become more innovative and prominent than what they were (not “more innovative and prominent than other cultures”) when their females become more sexually repressive and monogamous over extended periods of time. Similarly, individual cultures become less innovative and prominent than what they were (not “less innovative and prominent than other cultures”) when their females become more promiscuous for extended periods of time.

    Military and cultural sophistication “should be conflated … in general, but not completely.” The conflation becomes more apparent and applicable as we progress through the ages. Military sophistication in the modern era requires great technologies and applications of science; these great technologies and applications of science also help various cultural institutions progress. Finally, important aspects of military sophistication you seem to be overlooking are sustainability and ability to occupy, neither of which Genghis Khan's Mongols - an example you offered - were capable of doing.

    You’re comparing different cultures practiced by different peoples, which seems to be your fundamental error. As I explained before:

    “Your examples of Dorset Tuniit peoples, Inuit peoples, Vikings, Polynesians, and so on, all argue that such cultures were more innovative and sophisticated than certain cultural neighbours which were seemingly less promiscuous. … But whether they were or not is not relevant to Unwin’s thesis, and furthermore, my own, … To reiterate Unwin’s thesis, individual cultures become more innovative and prominent than what they were (not 'more innovative and prominent than other cultures') when their females become more sexually repressive and monogamous for extended periods of time. Similarly, individual cultures become less innovative and prominent than what they were (not 'less innovative and prominent than other cultures') when their females become more promiscuous for extended periods of time.”

    I compared West and East Polynesian cultures because they are practiced by the same people. Also, during the Polynesian era of colonization, the West and East Polynesian cultural divide was not yet in place, which indicates deception on your part when you, referring to colonization, wrote: “especially in the case of the Eastern Polynesians who did the majority of it, settling most places including Hawaii and New Zealand and Easter Island, the boundary corners of Polynesia as a whole.”

    Eastern Polynesia was settled by Polynesians who initially resided in Western Polynesia. The East and West cultural divide occurred after both Polynesias were settled. It was the Western Polynesians who settled East Polynesia. After both Polynesias were settled, cultural divisions began to occur. Before East Polynesia was settled, there was no such thing as East and West Polynesian cultures - there was only one people, Polynesians, who resided in the west (nearer to their alleged origin of Taiwan).

    The East and West Polynesian cultural divisions occurred after permanent settlements were established. Over time, West Polynesian cultures came to be more sexually repressive and monogamous than East Polynesian cultures, which may explain their extremely significant gap in cultural innovation and sophistication, which I detailed earlier:

    “West Polynesian cultures feature large, high-density populations, whereas East Polynesian cultures do not, despite having similar resources, people, and territorial size. West Polynesian cultures have monumental architecture, whereas such architecture is relatively absent in East Polynesian cultures. West Polynesian cultures have much stronger marriage institutions and therefore higher-investment parenting tendencies than East Polynesian cultures. West Polynesians cultures also have much more advanced monetary and political structures than East Polynesian cultures, and are more prominent traders.”

    If a culture becomes increasingly promiscuous over an extended period of time, its innovation and sophistication will gradually lessen; if a culture becomes increasingly sexually repressive and monogamous over an extended period of time, its innovation and sophistication will gradually increase. This is the theoretical basis to Unwin's thesis; if you're looking for distinct historical examples, read his work Sex and Culture. Unwin studied eighty different historical cultures - civilized and primitive - and observed how they stagnated or weakened when they became more promiscuous for extended periods of time, and grew intellectually, technologically, and territorially when they became more sexually repressive and monogamous over extended periods of time.
     
  21. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    I made absolutely no inferences about intelligence whatsoever. That was you.
    You have been comparing different cultures, not the "same" cultures at different times. You have even been comparing the biology of different species of mammals and drawing support for assertions about the cultures of people.

    The only realistic comparisons of "the same" culture at different times have been some vague allusions by me, mentioning the stagnations of the Ottomans and the Chinese (and associated female oppression). And I did not make the crucial step of establishing exactly what I would have meant by "the same" - a major issue you have not even approached, in people or in culture.
    Those weren't trends, they were comparisons, and you haven't dealt with them. Neither I nor you have argued "trends" with any evidence.
    Unfortunately for that "theoretical" basis, and the resulting thesis so typical of 1920s cultural analysis, it was backed by no evidence - no sure examples carefully investigated, no control groups, no relevant data collection capability, no mechanism or reasonable argument for the direction of influence, etc: Unwin had no way of measuring or verifying any of the variables involved and was reduced to cataloging stereotypes.
    Well, you have not done that on this thread. I am responding to your posts here. The comparisons you have made here have revealed ill-informed stereotypes about "sophistication" and "innovation" and so forth, attached to nonsense about being able to infer comparatively greater "intelligence" from these favored cultural features.

    And Unwin did not have the resources, in 1920, to make any such comparisons even, let alone come to any conclusions about "dependence" or the direction of cause and effect, etc. I doubt it could be done now, and I am not surprised it does not seem to have been attempted in the modern era.
    You appear to be adjusting your notion of the "same" culture and people to whatever level or relationship best supports your argument in a specific case - ignoring the massive stagnations of the Chinese and Ottomans, confusing the Polynesians, comparing the Dorsett and Inuit, not comparing the Vikings and Germanic peoples, calling Scottish peoples separated by hundreds of years and massive infusions from other cultures "the same" while declaring them to be "different" from their contemporary, geographically immediate, and genetically very similar neighbors, and so forth.

    Again: if Unwin is making some different argument than those visible here, with better supporting evidence etc, I apologize to his memory.
     
    Last edited: Jul 12, 2009
  22. Thoreau Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    3,380
    I think that's complete bullshit. Most of the world does not wear their concealing garmets. And I'm sure they are aware of that. Middle Easterners are not stupid and they are, for the most part, technologically up to date. I think what we wear here in teh west has little or no effect on terrorist acts. If that was the case, they'd be bombing the hell out of our beaches. Have you seen what people wear (or dont wear) on our beaches? Especially in Europe?
     
  23. Slysoon Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    155
    iceaura

    You explicitly stated Polynesian exploration and colonization was due in part to intelligence:

    “… the exploration of the Pacific and sucessful colonization of distant islands involved intelligence, expansion, great cultural sophistication, …” [Emphasis mine]

    Immediately following the quote above, you mentioned cultural neighbours to the Polynesians who were stagnant -

    “… and in the case of the Polynesians who did it … a higher rate of female promiscuity than was found in the stagnant cultures they left behind”

    - which implies that these stagnant cultural neighbours were not as intelligent (and culturally sophisticated) as the Polynesians.

    I referenced studies which examined closely related species of bats and cichlids (at times focusing on only a single species of bat or cichlid) and noted how promiscuity effected the size of their brains and genitals, and the qualities of their sperm. Promiscuous primate species, too, develop faster and larger sperm than identical or closely related species of monogamous primates. I then noted how Unwin’s anthropological and historical studies unearthed a human cultural trend - cultures which become increasingly promiscuous stagnate and weaken relative to their initial cultural standing, and cultures which become increasingly sexually repressive and monogamous grow relative to their initial cultural standing.

    I then offered my own explanation for this trend, which is contrary to Unwin’s. Unwin believed cultures which were more sexually repressive and monogamous had greater levels of mental or social energy which they channelled into developing culture; becoming more promiscuous would cause a loss in mental or social energy which would lessen cultural growth until it eventually stagnated and declined. I disagree with this explanation primarily for two reasons: there is no evidence for Unwin’s explanation of mental or social energy, and the trends of cultural change were only dependent on female sexual promiscuity and repression. Why Unwin offered this very unsexist explanation is probably due to his Freudian liberal stance and the immense influence environmental anthropologists such as Franz Boas had during such times.

    My own explanation is that a people whose females are promiscuous will gradually encourage the increase in resources spent developing the size of male genitals and qualities of sperm in said people (this trend has been demonstrated to occur amongst primates, and therefore humans). As the brain and genitals of humans are very resource dependent, investing in one tends to take away from the other. In promiscuous peoples, larger genitals and larger, faster sperm are advantageous for inseminating females, whereas such qualities are rather unnecessary for monogamous peoples whose females are receptive to only one man's sperm. Finally, different cultures composed of different peoples cannot be compared with great accuracy in terms of cultural sophistication and innovation on the basis of female promiscuity because inherent differences in the two peoples are not taken into account (the most significant inherent difference being intelligence).

    Finally, I did not compare the cultures you suggested as counterexamples to Unwin's misinterpreted thesis, save for Polynesians. I argued "more promiscuous" did not mean "promiscuous" (which you suggested in your examples of Vikings and Scots, two non-promiscuous peoples who were only slightly more promiscuous than their immediate cultural neighbours); also, I argued inherent differences in different peoples would not allow for cultural comparisons on the basis of cultural sexual practices. Finally, I compared East and West Polynesian cultures in detail because they are practiced by the same people, which supports my stance that comparisons become more ambiguous as relations weaken.
     
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